European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Monday 13th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I join in the congratulations to my noble friend Lord Barwell, who spoke succinctly and excellently illuminated where we go next in this whole great saga. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mann, on both his generous tribute to Mrs May, which she deserves, and his fight against sickening anti-Semitism.

It is impossible not to feel some emotion on this occasion, having spent well over half a century of my life discussing the future of Europe and the UK’s role in it, ever since the editor of the Daily Telegraph sent me to Brussels in 1962 to find out about, as he put it, “this Common Market thing”. Now at last comes this gateway—and it is only a gateway; I see many challenges ahead—confirming the replacement of the European Communities Act 1972, although of course by virtue of this Bill, rather than as an EU member state, we will still be under ECA provisions for another 11 months.

However, I find it a little sad and extraordinary that the debate publicly, and to some extent in the other place in the last few days, continues in an extraordinarily one-sided way. It is all couched in terms of what Britain can and cannot do in face of the supposed EU juggernaut, about solidarity and how difficult it is going to be to fit it all into our 11-month schedule. One would never guess from all this debate that things are changing just as fast on the other side of the channel—if not in Brussels, then deep in the heart of the EU member states—as they are here. People constantly talk about our being in a Westminster bubble and being out of touch. There is a Brussels bubble as well, which is in many ways just as out of touch with what is really happening, and we seem to hear sadly little of that.

The President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, spoke at the London School of Economics the other day. Her words were full of good will and friendship, but she spoke of the fear of Britain undercutting regulatory standards and the need for alignment and a level playing field. What neither she nor others seem to grasp is that global technological forces far bigger than Brexit are already undercutting—one should say overcutting and making utterly redundant—many of the EU’s standards and controls, which belong to a past age, whether we are talking about workers’ rights, conditions and benefits, consumer protection, the environment, financial services, taxation methods and state aids or other forms of protection.

To take one specific example, there has been a worry all along—raised in this House last week—about our energy situation. Will that be constrained by the withdrawal agreement and the Bill we are now discussing, given that we get 6.6% of our electricity supply every day through interconnectors in continental Europe? Actually, the withdrawal agreement which this Bill will enact fully protects our continental energy supplies and the excellent diversity of sources they provide; and under the protocol agreement for Northern Ireland, Ulster remains part of the all-Ireland system within the so-called internal energy market anyway. The point I am trying to make is that this is typical of a mass of regulations. We are right to question whether it is sustainable and whether it anything like matches our much higher standards. Frankly, the chief results of energy and climate policy throughout the EU so far has been more Russian gas reliance, extensive and very dirty coal burning, increasing unreliability of supply at a cruelly high energy cost and a miserable overall emissions performance.

These are the very last so-called standards and regulations with which we want to be aligned, dynamically or otherwise. Good Europeans, in my view, should be fighting for superior standards now in all these areas, ones that are truly relevant to the new world economy. If I may say so to my Liberal Democrat friends, if they had stuck to this line of EU reform, instead of trying to revoke and drag us back into the thickets of outdated EU controls, they might have done a lot better in the election. I hope they are not going to become like the Jacobites after the Hanoverian succession and spend the next 60 years fighting vainly for their cause, because that would be very tiresome—not that I shall be around.

The truth is that markets and trade flows around the world in the digital age are going through deep and radical transformation—as are patterns of business everywhere, financial services, data handling, agriculture and many other sectors—in ways with which the EU and the Brexit debate, and many commentators and self-styled experts, have simply not caught up. I am glad a new employment Bill is coming along. I hope it will be really radical. Worker and employee ownership of new wealth is still disgracefully low in this country; we can set the pace for the whole of Europe.

Finally, when it comes to foreign policy, while of course we must always co-operate on security, we certainly need to be well clear of cumbersome EU decision-making—or non-decision-making. As my noble friend Lord Lothian said in the Queen’s Speech debate last week—incidentally, I regard my noble friend as the best Foreign Secretary we never had—this is indeed the opportunity for a new British foreign policy, and defence and security policy as well, which take full account of the transformed and fluidised pattern of world power and international relations that has now emerged. Once out of the EU we can play our own game, agilely and with really skilful diplomacy.

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, it is now over six minutes. I remind all noble Lords—I am trying to play an equal wicket here—to keep within the advisory speaking time. There has been a little latitude, which we are monitoring, to be fair to all noble Lords.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

That is the real gateway that the Bill opens. We should now swiftly pass through it to better times.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued) & Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, I am no thespian, and my abilities as a scriptwriter are minimal. However, I have prepared a 60-second play to entertain your Lordships this afternoon.

Imagine the scene: a chance encounter between the Prime Minister and one of those voters from the “red wall” constituencies who lent his or her vote to the Conservatives on the basis that they would “Get Brexit done”. I thought we might stage it in the National Railway Museum in York. I have to tell noble Lords that this play is not a comedy. I am going to call my protagonist “Billy” for the sake of argument:

“Billy: The Withdrawal Bill before the election had protections for my EU workers rights, but those protections have been removed from the current Withdrawal Bill. Why?

The Prime Minister: No problem. The protections will be in an Employment Bill later this year.

Billy: Ah yes, I saw you stated in the Queen’s Speech briefing that the Employment Bill would ‘Enhance and protect workers’ rights – as the UK leaves the EU … making Britain the best place in the world to work’, and I noted that your manifesto said that you will ‘Raise standards in areas like workers’ rights’.

The Prime Minister: There you are then.

Billy: But Ministers have said that there will be no dynamic alignment, and yesterday the Chancellor of the Exchequer said no regulatory alignment either.

The Prime Minister: Correct.

Billy: But that means you could cut my rights: you could reduce my EU right to paid holiday from four weeks to two.

The Prime Minister: That’s not our intention, but you must understand that we can’t have our hands tied in negotiations with the EU.

Billy: Ah! Now I understand. The EU might want to cut the rights of British workers, and you want the freedom to defend them.

The Prime Minister: Not quite. The EU will be seeking to defend your rights. It’s the British Government who might need to threaten to reduce them.

Billy: But I thought, when I voted to take back control, that the British Government would stand up for British workers’ rights.

The Prime Minister: Not quite.

[Dramatic pause.]

Billy: I’ve been conned. You’ve done me up like a—[expletive deleted]—kipper.

THE END.”

Will the Government give an assurance that they will not permit workers in the United Kingdom to have fewer rights now or in the future than those of their counterparts in the EU, the US or any other country with which a free trade agreement is sought? If that assurance is given, this amendment will be unnecessary. If that assurance is not given, the Minister should not mince words and should state clearly that in these negotiations the British Government will not defend the rights of British workers.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, after that rather enjoyable contribution, and despite the very distinguished movers of this amendment, I find the whole thing a little bit puzzling. First, surely it is obvious that we are a responsible trading nation seeking the highest gold standards of regulation, standards and welfare and that, if we want to trade with and to expand our trade in the great markets of Asia, Africa and America as well as in our neighbours in Europe, we must rigorously observe the best international standards. That is a must. Even if we had a choice in the matter, which we do not, we would have to pursue that course.

Secondly, is it not obvious that in exporting, as we must, not only to the great European market but to all the countries of the Americas, Asia—where all the major growth in consumer markets will be over the next 10 years—Africa and Latin America, we will have to conform strictly to their standards as customers? If we are measuring the design and thickness of windscreens in motor cars, the windscreen provisions laid down in the European Common Market will have to be observed or we will not sell cars into the European Union. The same goes for America, India and China, each with its own quite different standards. We will have to be very flexible in all our patterns of standards and regulations governing health and safety, conditions, durability and all the other conformities required in these new markets. That will happen anyway.

Thirdly, the EU standards in some areas are excellent, and no doubt we will parallel and continue with them as we have before, but some are a little out of date. We are now moving into a world in which the predominant pattern of our European economies is services; we are a service economy. Frankly, job security is not what it was for anybody, so we need to redesign rights, benefits and support for millions of workers in a world where the old guarantees of a job for life and so on—the security that the great trade unions battled for in the past—will no longer be there. A totally new pattern of work has emerged, in which businesses will be operated in completely different ways. This requires a completely fresh approach to the pattern of benefits, security, protection and support; we must pioneer it in this country.

With all the variety of the markets, standards and regulations that we will have to meet—to be a successful exporter into China and so on—why we should want to be tied solely to, and aligned solely with, the pattern of our neighbours in the remains of the European Union is, frankly, a puzzle. I see the motive and concern behind it, the worry that there may be a sliding away of standards, but the reality is that we have no choice but to maintain very high standards indeed. Varied export markets demand standards of a whole variety, and there is no choice in this matter at all.

A great deal of this level playing field stuff is not driven by those concerns—of protecting workers in the new environment and new working conditions of the digital age—as it should be. I think it is driven by something else. I say to the very noble and distinguished movers of this amendment that that is something worth considering before they press it, because I do not think it fits into the modern world into which we are moving.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, the importance of this amendment cannot be overstated. At a time when the Government like to tell us repeatedly how well they are doing on employment in this country, this always overlooks the growing anxiety in the country about the conditions in which many people are working and the exploitation, sometimes quite ruthless, that goes on. There is a real anticipated anxiety that there is a driving force, wherever it is coming from—within No. 10 or wherever—behind so much of this legislation and that its real objective is about reaching a situation in which we can have a deregulated society and a free-for-all. That is the belief, the conviction, that many people believe is behind it all. That is why what is said about employment and social rights is so important in this protections list.

I care about the whole protections list but, if I were to pick one other item on it, it is that we are living in an acute and immediate crisis with the environment and biodiversity. Unless we take this seriously, the kinds of problems that will overtake our society in future could dwarf any of the preoccupations which take up so much of our time in Parliament at the moment. It is imperative to ensure that we do not just have good intentions and great aspirations but that we have the means to deliver what we are aspiring to in this context. We must insist on the standards which have so far been achieved—not as an end in themselves but as a platform from which we can move forward to still stronger, more imaginative action. I cannot say how much I welcome this amendment.